Learning Search Engine Basics

SEO Blog

SEO is an incredibly complicated topic. That’s why these Learning Center posts focus on helping you learn some search engine optimization basics. By learning the basics, you can see how a concerted SEO campaign can help your business!

Sep
14

SEO 101: Search Engine Optimiziation Basics

The rising tide lifts all ships, so we at NSE Media are committed to helping you learn about all facets of marketing—from design to development to SEO. The more you know, the better you’ll perform. If there’s one thing that drags down the reputation of internet marketing in all its forms, it’s the deployment of poor strategies.

Tips for SEO Basics

That’s why we’re committed to helping everyone learn about best practices and proven strategies. Today, we’ll be starting with proven SEO tips and tricks. These are tried and true best practices that can help put your business on the map (the Google map, that is). Because this is our inaugural SEO blog, we’re going to start with the basics.

And that’s important to note because SEO is something that is fundamentally pretty simple—but exceptionally complicated once you dig into it. For everyone’s sake, we’re starting with the simple tips and tricks for SEO beginners. Let’s get started!

Simple Tip #1: Make Sure You Have Meta Data

When you search for something on Google, you see a list of results. And those results are provided in a particular way: there’s a title and then a short description. This is usually referred to as a Meta Title and Meta Description. If you don’t articulate your own meta data, Google will take a guess.

And that’s not always a good thing. Sometimes Google will get your title right. But often it won’t. There are numerous plug-ins that you can easily download and enable which will then allow you to input an intentional meta title and meta description. And here’s the really important part for SEO: you want to make sure your keywords are organically inserted into your meta data.

In fact, both your meta title and your meta description should mention your desired keyword.

Simple Tip #2: Content is King

Having your meta title and meta description properly implemented is key to controlling the way Google notices you. So too is your content. In fact, if your content isn’t up to snuff, it likely won’t matter how great your meta data are. When it comes to SEO, the most important thing you can do is make sure your content is great.

I’m using the term “content” pretty broadly, and that’s on purpose. Traditionally, Google has liked to see a significant amount of written content on websites. That’s because, frankly, written content is easy to scan and easy for search engines to parse. This still seems to be one of Google’s preferred forms of content, so we usually recommend that websites have at least 750 words on each page of their website (the more the better).

But every website will be different. Maybe your users respond better to videos. In fact, Google is starting to prefer a mixture of videos and images instead of straight up written copy. The point is this: fill your website with well thought out, useful content that your users will either consume or enjoy. In other words: you need to have good content.

Simple Tip #3: Keep Things Unique

The final tip we’ll give you for SEO today is about individuality. In Google’s more primitive days, the so-called “best” content would get ranked depending on several factors. But these days, Google has adopted an approach that’s a little more sophisticated.

Modern Google algorithms search for content that is unique. That is, they don’t want the website ranked #1 and #2 to resemble each other too closely. They’d rather give users a multitude of options and let them decide which one is best.

That’s why you’ll want to make sure that the content on your own website is unique and individualized. In some cases, you might be limited—after all, many professionals have some information that is simply required to be there. But unique refers to the content itself and how you post that content. The more creative you can be, the better.

One thing is for sure: the last thing you ever want to do is copy and paste your content from another source. That’s one sure way to get on Google’s naughty list.

We Can Help

At NSE Media, we can help you craft a nuanced and exceptional SEO strategy. That’s because our strategies are rooted in best practices and tried techniques. If you want to know more about how NSE Media can help your company or brand succeed in a complicated and challenging SEO environment, all you have to do is contact us!

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